She went to the bathroom and then boxed up her stuff. They weren’t going to fire her—then who would the writers go to when they needed to ask if a joke was racist or just edgy?—but she wasn’t going to work under fucking Robby. She told everyone she wanted to try out the stay-at-home-mom thing for a couple of years, because she was lucky enough to be able to afford it. She told herself maybe she’d like it.

She made it another month before she started biting off her fingernails with boredom, and a week after that before she found herself tearing a pillow apart with her bare hands because she was so angry at Charlie, who always either had tears coming out his eyes or shit coming out his bottom. Daniel helped when he could, but he’d taken a promotion he hadn’t wanted to make up for the loss of her salary, which meant much longer hours at the office. She tried reaching out to contacts at other shows, but nobody seemed to be interested in hiring new mothers. (Or word had spread that she was crazy for how she’d left Staying Up, and no one wanted to work with her. She suspected that might play a part too.)

She was never alone. She was so lonely.

Amara and Charlie were sitting in a neighborhood coffee shop one Wednesday morning, one of those expensively shabby-chic places with a shelf along one wall displaying a vase of dried wildflowers and a rusted washboard. The barista monitoring the playlist was a big fan of watered-down bluegrass. Although the design aesthetic was “old-fashioned hardship,” a cup of coffee cost five dollars. Amara wouldn’t have chosen it at any other point in her life, but right now, it wasn’t her apartment, so it was heaven.

She was eating a croissant with one hand and rocking Charlie’s stroller back and forth with the other, in the hopes that the motion would keep him from wailing. No such luck. A guy in his early twenties, sipping a cappuccino and reading a battered copy of Jude the Obscure, shot them a dirty look. Get a job, Amara thought, and tried to glare back, but it bothered her. You could plan to go to a coffee shop because you wanted to spend one measly half hour sitting someplace outside your apartment, you could take a whole morning getting your baby ready and talking to him in soothing tones, and you could navigate the stroller down the streets, spend your money, find your table, and unload, your aching body collapsing onto the chair. But if, right as the first bite of flaky pastry began to melt in your mouth, your baby decided to start crying, suddenly you were an inconsiderate asshole and a terrible mother to boot, and you’d better leave right away.

Amara took Charlie out of the stroller and held him against her chest, trying to soothe him. Charlie let out a particularly piercing wail, and Mr. Jude the Obscure snapped his book shut. “Seriously?” he said, filled with righteous indignation before looking around the coffee shop as if seeking to rally the legions of people whose lives Amara was ruining. “I mean, come on.”

Most of the other people in the coffee shop had headphones on and didn’t look up, but a beautiful woman by the counter met the guy’s eyes and smiled. She had a stroller of her own, but the baby inside was a sleeping cherub who probably changed her own diapers.

Buoyed by outside confirmation, America’s Number One Intellectual looked back at Amara, smug. Well, it was useless to stay here now. So nice to know that the state of the sisterhood was strong. Amara started to buckle Charlie back into his stroller, hating everyone and everything. The other mother made her way toward a table, but then she stopped, right in front of the reading guy.

“Someday when you’ve got a screaming infant,” the other mother said in a low voice, that lovely smile still upon her face, “I hope the people you encounter are understanding.” Amara paused in her buckling. Charlie, miraculously, paused in his screaming. The other mother’s eyes burned a bright, big hole into the reading guy. “And I hope you are so, so grateful that not everyone is a dickhead like you.”

The guy’s mouth snapped open, then shut again. He swallowed. Then he stuffed his book into his bag, stood up, and marched out. The door to the shop banged shut behind him, rattling the front window. The other mother turned and looked at Amara, a flush creeping up her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was too much.”

Amara let out a cackle. “No, it wasn’t,” she said. “Please come sit with me. I’m Amara.”

“I’m Whitney,” the woman said, sitting down as Charlie’s cries began to fade. Up close, she exhibited some of the markers of new motherhood after all—the darker skin underneath her eyes, a section of hair that had escaped the taming influence of the blow-dryer. Perhaps her baby wasn’t a perfect angel. “God, remember when you could go to a coffee shop like it was nothing?”

“Mmm,” Amara said. “You could stay as long as you wanted.”

“You could sit and think.”

“Well, only eighteen years to go, and then we’ll be able to do it again. What’s eighteen years?” Amara said.

Whitney laughed, tilting her head back, a warm, wonderful sound, and the two of them kept chatting, giddy to find a fellow traveler in the same uncharted land, swapping stories about motherhood, trading recommendations about playpens and pediatricians.

“And do you like your ob-gyn?” Amara asked.

Whitney’s face tightened. Amara had clearly hit upon a sore subject. “I think I want to switch. I just came from an appointment”—she hesitated, then lowered her voice—“where he tried to push a bunch of Xanax on me.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think he was even listening to me! It was so practiced, like he does it for every mother that comes in, just hands them some free pills and a prescription instead of actually having a conversation.” Whitney indicated her bag, outraged. “I’m just going to throw them out.”

“You could sell them on the black market, make some cash,” Amara joked. “Or you never know if you might have a long flight sometime, and it’ll be handy to have them lying around.”

“Good point,” Whitney said, then rolled her eyes. “I’ll shove them in a desk drawer or something, let them gather dust.” She paused. “Sorry. Strange day. Would you mind . . . maybe not telling people about the whole Xanax thing?”

“Ah,” Amara said. “Unfortunately, I’ve already hired a skywriter.”

Whitney let out that wonderful laugh of hers again. Then she propped her chin on her hand and leaned toward Amara. “Not to come on too strong,” she said, “but I’m starting a playgroup of new mothers in the neighborhood. Our first meeting is next Tuesday. You should come.”

So Amara joined the playgroup. And then her life really went down the shitter.

Everything in playgroup was expensive. You had to pay for the music and those fucking diamond-encrusted vitamins and bring good wine every once in a while, because even though Whitney was unbelievably generous—God, she even surprised them at Christmas by presenting them with a package for a group wellness retreat in the spring!—it would have been rude to enjoy her hospitality every time without making a single contribution of your own. Then there was the problem of spending hours with a bunch of gold medalists in the field of competitive mothering. None of the women was overt about it, but Amara had a highly cultivated bullshit meter. She knew when other women were judging her and trying to outdo one another.